I was in Target and decided to take a look in housewares. The selection of really good looking bowls was impressive and most of them are cheaper than regular house plant pots. I think I'll be getting a few of them, and a diamond encrusted drill bit. I never thought to look at these bowls as potential pots. Thanks for the ideas!

Womacknursery.com has four or five each of the most common Tina and Victorinox knives, 4 & 8 mil tape in clear, green, Etc, as well as Parafilm, shears, rubber strips, and professional production stuf. Being a chemist I bought Parafilm M in a 225 ft by 4 in wide roll from Fischer Scientific many years ago. I cut it cross wise to a 4 in length and match the with to the diameter of the wood I'm wrapping. Since I graft mostly citrus, I use a lot of liquid chlorine bleach and therefore get most use from the stainless Victorinox blades. Sharpen on a hard or extra hard (fine grained) Arkansas novaculite stone. Stones are available at gun/knife shops or shows or RioGrande Jewelry supply Albuequrque. Super fine diamond and syn. corundum (Al2O3) can be be used but cheap ones either fail soon or are not smooth enough to get a razor edge. If you use a Tina carbon steel blade you can use silicon carbide stones available at your hardware store. Dont buy a sorry knife. Use single edge razor blades instead if you have to save $. For other savings You can cut plastic bags to strips and finish with masking tape. No tie needed. For rubber stripes, some people use heavy rubber bands. I use 8mil tape and stretch it instead. You may not need parafilm if you do something else to conserve moisture in the scion or bud wood. But it sure beats wax unless you really know wax.

This thread is hysterical and so timely now that the holidays will soon be upon us. Fortunately I haven't received too many hideous gifts...at least not from friends or relatives who live near me. My aunt across country will never know I never used the afghan she made me for my wedding 25 years ago. However I'm too sentimental to give it away because I know how much work went into it so it sits in a box in the back of my linen closet. My husband can't understand why I keep it and once jokingly said "Some day we'll be old enough for it" Ouch. Really depends on what it is, some things end up like the afghan, others go to an out of the way shelf or cabinet for a short time. Some will get returned especially if they came with a gift receipt. If it's from someone like my sister we're OK with saying hate it take it back. And I'm OK with straight to the Goodwill. Never burned or displayed any gift when the giver came to visit. Every year a few girlfriends and I take turns hosting a holiday lunch. We do a small secret Santa gift exchange and the last few years we added a "pink elephant" gag gift exchange. A strange, funny or hideous item that can be new, old regifted, you name it. Usually wrapped beautifully on the outside and a horror on the inside. You get the change to steal before opening and after and it's become a hightlight of our gathering. Usually I choose by the wrap and walk away with a beautiful gift bag or box I'll definitly use again, but sometime it's true that one person's trash is another's treasure because I can't believe some of the crap the girls have coveted!

I cough and choke when I'm around scented candles. I often wonder what people are breathing in when they burn them so much. Obviously it can't be good for you. I enjoy candles (and fire for that matter a campfire is a wonderful thing) but they need to be plain old cheap paraffin candles. No stench, no smoke, just clean burning candles. Candle aisles and cleaner aisles are two in a store I have to move through rapidly. What some call "rainforest", "citrus" and the like would be more appropriately called "cheapbeerfart" and "armpit". And I tell you for true there ain't no way in heaven, hell or Houston that I'd eat an apple pie that smelled like an apple pie scented candle!